I would be perfectly happy for a world where all cash transactions are rounded to the nearest 10¢. I get rid of any nickels and pennies I ever get in change anyway. If my wife's not nearby to hand them off to, I just donate them to whatever change or tip jar is sitting on the counter nearby. They're simply not worth carrying around.

In fact, I'd like a world with no metal money at all, but rather than getting rid of quarters and dimes altogether, I'd like them made into small bills, perhaps a quarter and tenth the size of a regular bill, respectively.

This is odd for me, because I was once a major proponent of switching over to an all coins system. I would use only dollar coins instead of bills, if I could help it, and I would tell anyone who would listen about the advantages of switching all of our bills over to metal money. In my ideal world, people would have gone back to carrying their cash in small pouches. I no longer see that as ideal.

Even more than a world with all paper cash, I look forward to a future world in which there is no cash at all, where all transactions are completed by swipe or thumbprint or whatever standard the society settles on.

Of course, despite all these opinions, I have little faith that a petition will accomplish much. I'm sure there is a group of lobbyists somewhere with a vested interest in keeping the coins coming, and that's more powerful than any number of public voices.

Also: If one is going to start a petition, why start it on change.org instead of whitehouse.gov? Not being snarky; genuinely curious.

I'm in the exact opposite camp. I'd prefer $1 and $2 coins, and I'm increasingly going cash-only as more and more retailers start tracking and analyzing purchase patterns by credit card. I carry cash more now than ever.

I'm in the Lincoln camp... sort of. All my non-budgeted spending is done with cash. Less because of retailers tracking, more because it's much easier to control spending when you take x amount of cash out each week and no more. I spend a lot less on things like going out to lunch or buying random little things when I use only cash for those purchases.

EDIT: Oh, and as far as it costing more than it's value to produce a penny or nickle, there was actually an author who wrote a book about living completely cashless on NPR this week. Even he admitted that's a false argument against cash as cash is spent thousands of times over, thus creating thousands of times their face value worth of economic transactions.

I dislike debit because you aren't using their money, you're using your money, and if you get a card lost/stolen/compromised, the protections aren't as good as with credit cards. Credit is safer from a 'worst case scenario' perspective.

All debit/credit based here... I almost never have cash and I am annoyed when I am expected to have cash. With all the methods of transferring funds electronically, there is no reason to use cash.. That being said, I'd be ok with paper cash only. Round everything to 25 cents. Then our entire system would be $0.25, $0.50, $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. Eight bills and eliminate four mass produced coins. (The half dollar and full dollar coins are not that prevalent). Of course, it would REALLY suck the first few years as everyone would, of course, round up for merchandise and round down for pay. But it would all balance out and we'd see trends on items. For things we would normally see for $10 would be packaged and priced as 2 or 3 for $.25 or 5 for $.50.

Furthermore, the US Mint not producing a coin would not equate to paychecks being rounded to 25 cents. Electronic transfers, etc. don't give a damn what coinage is available. The only outcome of this is consumers get shorted up to 24 cents per cash transaction, which entices them to use plastic, which small businesses hate because of fees.

So basically the only people who profit are geeks who spend too much time worrying about their pocket change without doing the math of who probably actually benefits from not having it: major banks and credit card companies.

Furthermore, the US Mint not producing a coin would not equate to paychecks being rounded to 25 cents. Electronic transfers, etc. don't give a damn what coinage is available. The only outcome of this is consumers get shorted up to 9 cents per cash transaction, which entices them to use plastic, which small businesses hate because of fees.

So basically the only people who profit are geeks who spend too much time worrying about their pocket change without doing the math of who probably actually benefits from not having it: major banks and credit card companies.

Who gets screwed? Poor people without bank accounts.

Fixed, Rosies aren't going anywhere.

In my opinion Lincolns and Jeffs aren't either. The mint has made amazing profits on selling different versions of coins in Proof. There would cutting holes in their own pockets by stopping them from minting.

The New Zealand experience is much different to all other countries, from what I can tell. I could be wrong. Anyway, we are almost entirely electronic in our purchases, but we use cash cards, not credit cards. Most people I know there don't have a credit card. There are no such things as cheques anymore. No coins smaller than 10 cents, we do have $2 coins.

Rounding occurs on cash transactions, but not by nine cents. No more than five cents, and it can work in your favour, if you cared about paying three cents less than your items are worth. Five cents and above gets rounded up, and four cents and below is rounded down. Swedish rounding or something.

Now I'm in Switzerland and everything is the opposite. Half the stores have NO method of electronic payment (and to me used to being able to buy a coffee from a van parked on the side of the road and paying with my cashflow card - this is alien). Most people walk around with ridiculous quantities of money in their pockets. Hundreds of Francs. Odd and alien to me. I am worried when I walk around with cash like that.